-The Shadow of the Wind

-Frankenstein (IT'S RIGHT THEEEEEERE)

-To Kill a Mockingbird

-A Perfect Storm

-Pet Semetary (okay, so maybe 'enjoyed' isn't the word, BUT he can have double trauma from, y'know, All That PLUS caregiver trauma! :D)

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

Question 1/3

Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

…or, how an awkward date led me discovering something very important about myself.

BUCKLE UP, BITCHES.

Okay. Backstory time. From the ages of 12-16, I attended a teeny private school. And by teeny, I mean ‘freshman class had six people in it’. Between you, me, and What About Bob?, it sucked. But this isn’t about that.

One of my handful of friends left to go to a bigger school when we were fifteen, and at some point she convinced me to go on a blind date with some classmate of hers. Whatever, I say, because again, my school is tiny and getting any sort of date is just not going to happen. And because I did want to have SOME kind of Traditional Teenage Experience, I figure, what the heck? I’ll go. Why not.

So Friend’s Friend (FF) and I text a bit for the few weeks before this happens (read: I get the nerve to tell my parents that I WANT A LIFE so can I see a movie with a stranger). So he was only, like, a bit of a stranger. Eh.

We go to the movies, he’s all, ‘wanna make out?’ and I go (inwardly, because I’m not THAT much of a disaster), ‘THIS IS MY ONE CHANCE, IMMA DO IT’.

It. I. I was not impressed. It was actually sort of awful. So I did learn a lesson on how to be all, ‘it was great, we gotta do this again!’ with no intention of doing this again. But anyways. I go home feeling a little confused because making out is a thing, right, people are obsessive about it? Do I suck? Did FF suck? What’s going on? Disney lied to me! Disney, how could you? I was promised joy, not, ‘your tongue is gross and why are you breathing like at all’.

I Google ‘hate kissing’. Because what is Google for if not soothing confused teenage girls.

…

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!

aaaand another one bites the duck,

we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos

power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,

the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis

and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.

Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp

Bird number 14 out of 14,

The Great blue heron, Ardea herodius

thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.

1) put that guy into situations